Laigle’s Forum

by Don Hank

A recent article by Bob Unruh in WND shows how states are fighting back against federal encroachment – in the case in question, by declaring themselves unwilling to comply with federal detention orders under NDAA. This quiet revolution is merely an extension of other local and state muscle flexing, such as the pushback in Arizona by the state legislature and by Sheriff Arpaio, and the tough anti-invasion law in Alabama.

But I think this could be just the beginning.

The federal government has created a network of vested interests to keep the states in line, all long after the writing of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, designed to prevent federal abuses. The biggest club they have created is grants to states. Every state gets millions of your and my money, duly shrunken after passing through the sticky fingers of Congress. This money is nothing more than a bribe, a cheap trick to make states grovel and behave like good little slaves. It has worked well thus far. And the money club is not the only weapon in the federal arsenal in its war on the states and the citizens. Obama has shown that states who fail to fall in line behind the dictator in chief don’t get needed non-monetary aid either. Texas, always a renegade stand-alone state, recently watched as its forests were reduced to cinders for lack of much-needed federal help, which eventually arrived after it was rather late.

Arizona saw a lawsuit filed against it by the lawyer in chief, who even went crying to the UN to help subdue the big bad Brewer. And some of the lower southern states found that, after they had sullied Big Daddy Washington, the illegal alien criminals and hit-and-run perps it turned in to ICE were no longer being dealt with. Some came back and killed and raped. That was the states’ payback for not liking the jackboot.

But what if:

What if the states turned the tables on the feds?

I mean, where did this federal money and power come from in the first place?

Why the people of the various and sundry states who pay taxes.

Now, what if the good people of the abused states got together and made a law that prohibited state citizens from paying the entire amount of the federal taxes in those instances when the feds were playing these dirty games? What if they were enjoined to withhold a certain percentage or a set amount corresponding to an estimate of the losses incurred?

What if the states calculated the amount of money it would take to incarcerate lawbreakers who were allowed by the feds to sneak into their state and cause trouble? And what if the states explicitly deducted this amount from the amount their state citizens were bound to pay to the feds?

What if they made it illegal for citizens of that state to pay the federal tax amount that, according to the calculations of the state comptroller generals, was owed them by the feds for dereliction of duty?

Suppose they calculated that X number of illegal aliens had entered their state as a direct result of the federal government’s failure to station an adequate number of border guards and provide them with the necessary equipment and training, and further, as a partial result of their hamstringing them with unreasonable rules of engagement and jailing those who failed to comply with said unreasonable rules.

Suppose they calculated the amount of damage to the state of improperly providing federal aid to people who repeatedly built their homes in areas repeatedly stricken by natural disasters — and then billed the feds for this?

Suppose they calculated the probable number of Mexicans fleeing their homes and entering their state due to AG Holder’s dirty game of Fast and Furious and the amount of money and human life this probably cost in that state?

Suppose they collected this money by the same method, forbidding their citizens to pay this amount to the fed and funneling it to state coffers instead.

And suppose some of the non-border states used a percentage of this money saved to help border states beef up their border security and pay for the detention and return of illegal alien criminals.

And suppose they blew off any unconstitutional and arbitrary federal laws in their state affairs that “prohibited” them from returning illegal aliens on their own? Without the intermediary of ICE, for example. A series of contiguous states could set up a kind of reverse “Underground Railroad” to return criminal aliens to Mexico.

Now, certainly some will say this is carrying things a bit too far.

Oh really?

Did you know what Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution says? Read it for yourself:

 … and [The United States] shall protect each of them [the States] against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence

The extent of the invasion of Mexican cartels is a well kept secret.

But there are numerous credible reports by people living in the border area showing that some areas are no longer safe for Americans to enter or live.

The Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona has areas that are closed off because the cartel has completely taken them over.

These situations fit anyone’s definition of an invasion. And the damage done by Latin gangs and drug dealers everywhere is certainly domestic violence, all traceable to a porous southern border, thanks to a negligent central government itching for a come-uppance.

The US Constitution is a contract between the States and Washington. In all of contract law, there is give and take. (Contracts with only “take” are deemed unlawful, as in the case of prenups). Each of the parties to the contract is both beneficiary and provider of rights. Whenever one party reneges on part of the contract, the counterparty who is hurt by this has a right to deny a corresponding part of its contribution to the bargain.

The states have not reneged in any way. They are a compliant partner. The US government, on the other hand, has completely reneged on parts of its contract — particularly its duty to protect the States against invasion but also with regard to undeclared — and hence unlawful — wars against countries that are not an enemy in any traditionally accepted respect, or the NDAA, which permits the federal government to detain Americans without charges or evidence. It must expect consequences, and if it won’t hold up its part of the agreement, then at least part of the agreement intended to benefit it is null and void by law.

There are 2 main things keeping the States as a counterparty from declaring part of the bargain null and void despite flagrant federal breach of contract:

1—Lack of knowledge of the law and how it applies to the parties.

2—Lack of will.

It is only a matter of time before all the states affected by the Federal government’s failure to perform its duty will understand that they are on the right side of the law and the fed is clearly in non-performance of its contract.

And in our economic crisis, as states find themselves increasingly strapped for cash, laying off employees, halting public works and closing down offices, they will eventually reach a point of desperation when a strategy such as I have outlined above will appear, if not attractive, then at least inevitable.

The commandment is:  “Thou shalt not steal.”

Most people believe that this commandment represents sound morality, even if they are not Christians.  Nonetheless, it seems that this moral precept is forgotten once we start talking politics.  And no wonder:  Americans have been making up ‘right and wrong’ for themselves for quite a while.   Obviously it was only a matter of time before it seeped into our national mindset.

A good example of this in action is the current attempt by the Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut, ‘paying for it’ by having the ‘rich’ pay their ‘fair share.’

That we are talking about theft becomes clearer when one considers exactly what the ‘payroll tax’ is.  We are talking about the portion of one’s income that goes directly into Social Security.  Your contributions, in turn, ensure that when you retire, you will be able to draw a steady check.

Now, the liberals tend to target the rich to fund a variety of their favorite programs, and many of those times there ostensibly is some ‘public’ benefit of them.  For example, we might put public infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, in this category.  Usually, though, the program favors smaller, special interest, populations.  The appearance of a socialistic transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor becomes more profound the more targeted the program.

But the funding of the payroll tax cut by the rich really takes the cake.  It is one of those few instances of a government service where the individual directly benefiting from the service is also the one funding it.  Heck, it might be the only example of such a thing.

To have the rich pay for the payroll tax cut is to ask them to directly fund the retirements of the rest of the population, in a direct and transparent manner.  The ‘99%’ are demanding that the ‘1%’ pay for a service that only the ‘99%’ will benefit from, without themselves contributing a dime.  There is no ‘public’ benefit; the ‘special interest’ group just turns out to be exceptionally large.

This is stealing.

Stealing is wrong.

Therefore, this is wrong.

The real kick in the pants here is that while the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class’ are getting behind the highway robbery of their ‘richer’ countrymen, they are actually robbing their future selves.  Since the amount of your contribution is correlated with how much you receive in your retirement account, by continuing to not pay the payroll tax, you are decreasing the amount you will ultimately receive. Read the rest of this entry »

Officials seek to terminate Johansson family’s parental rights 

Please Write

Both the ADF and HSLDA are asking for letters to be written in an attempt to renew attention to the Johanssons’ case. You can download a sample letter using either format below.

Download the sample letter in Microsoft Word >>

Download the sample letter as a PDF >>
(requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

HSLDA has learned that Swedish officials on the Island of Gotland may be seeking to terminate the parental rights of Annie and Christer Johansson. Seven-year old Domenic Johansson was snatched by a fully armed Swedish police unit in June 2009 while on board an airplane bound for Annie’s homeland of India. Among the primary reasons given for the seizure was the fact that Domenic was homeschooled. His entire family has been denied any contact with their son for nearly a year. HSLDA and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed a joint application on behalf of the Johansson family at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in June 2010 and have been working to support the family since shortly after Domenic’s seizure.

Both the ADF and HSLDA are asking for letters to be written in an attempt to renew attention to the family’s case and to encourage Swedish officials to release Domenic back to his family. The United States Supreme Court has called the termination of parental rights the family court equivalent of the death penalty. Annie and Christer have done nothing worthy of such a horrific outcome. Will you join us as fellow advocates and take a moment to write to the Swedish Social Services Committee in charge of Domenic’s custody situation? The Johansson family is grateful for your efforts on their behalf. ADF has prepared a sample letter or you may write your own letter to the committee. You can download a copy of the sample letter in Microsoft Word or as a PDF file.

Please mail letters to:

Swedish Social Services Committee
Socialnämnden
Gotlands Kommun
621 81 Visby
SWEDEN

A stamp for a standard weight letter to Sweden will cost $0.98 through the U.S. Postal Service.

Please also continue to keep the Johansson family in your prayers as they somehow endure this unbearable situation.

Our thanks to the HSLDA for this alert: http://hslda.org/hs/international/Sweden/default.asp

Email addresses of Swedish officials in charge of this case (they read English):

sofi.rosenqvist@gotland.se;

caroline.palmqvist@gotland.se;

lena.celion@gotland.se;

marika.gardell@gotland.se;

The following was posted by Laigle’s Staff writer Anthony Horvath at his blog:

I understand that Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is just phase one in a more powerful overhaul, but I am leery about any plan that cannot be attained within a single term of the presidency.  Moreover, we cannot count on the legislators to get behind it, or sustain it once it gets going.

So that’s a pickle, right?  There pretty much isn’t a plan out there that can be rolled out within a single term with the assurance that the legislative branch will implement it as proposed (and not load it with 2,000 pages of caveats).

So what to do?

And consider a different plan that actually tackles these issues head on and effectively ensures that the plan comes to fruition.

The plan is simply this:  deny the Federal government the right to collect individual and corporate taxes, period.  Instead, the Federal government would collect funds from the states.  The states in turn would be in charge of collecting the taxes that would then be sent along to the Federal government.  How the states collect that revenue would be entirely up to each individual state.  Each state would be assigned an ‘amount due’ based on some kind of objective and reasonable criteria, like for example, on a per capita basis and a calculation of that state’s particular burden on the Federal budget.

Read the whole proposal

Elect quality Americans – willing or not!

By Anthony Horvath
© 2011 

Conservatives rightly rejoiced at the results of the 2010 midterm elections, but a more sober analysis could lead them into abject depression. One could almost believe that last November’s results indicated real progress until one remembers that just two years earlier the landslide belonged to the liberals. We deceive ourselves if we think that there has been a tectonic shift in the way that Americans think. In reality, there was probably no principled, informed change in American sentiment. In all probability, it was a mere change in American winds.

We may see evidence of that in the reaction to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s reform attempts. This July, six Wisconsin GOP senators are facing a recall election. In contrast, most of the Democratic senators that walked off the job are likely going to get a pass by the electorate. Oh, how quickly the winds change!

What we really need is an America that knows what its values are and remembers them from one election to the next. Before we address how to bring this about, we should consider why it is otherwise.

For example, recall G.K. Chesterton’s famous statement, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” A similar charge can be made about conservatism, except it isn’t difficult – just not tried.

Read more: Elect quality Americans – willing or not! http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=306949#ixzz1OLDsXq6q